Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Seven months later, and I'm resurfacing. At least I have something to show for... our new home! We literally spent 2-3 months painting every single room (except the sunroom), after work every night, every weekend... And then I've spent even more time on my little decorative touches. So allow me to give you a little 'before and after' tour of my favorite things. Shall we?

Wish I could take credit for the outside-of-the-house painting, but I just can't. However, I can say we were inspired here by Reynolda Village in our color scheme of painted white brick/etc. and "Reynolda green shutters" as we told the painters. New grey roof, new lamp post & flowers, and a lot of uprooting shrubbery and replacing. Not too shrubby eh? See what I did there... you know you've missed my puns!

From a silver, metallic mirror from Target to a Dove White (Benajamin Moore) and Grant Beige (Benjamin Moore) Chevron mirror... ended up being a lot more difficult than I guessed due to the rounded frame (not flat and thus not easy to measure a straight line!). It isn't perfect, but I still love it.

Who knew that three, browned and wilted flowers inside of scratched, wooden frames could have such potential? New white paint, a background pattern inspired by cococozy featuring green elephants inspired by Jonathan Adler... voila!

The Living Room. Not sure if you can tell very well from these photos (I think I need to revert back to the non-iPhone photos and invest in a dynamite camera)... but I used Revere Pewter (also BM) on the walls which is just the best grey that has ever been invented. We're still working on our wall art here, but blue & grey is the color scheme and these fun pillows are Joss & Main babies.

Really not sure why I keep including the "before" and "after" disclaimers but I guess I can't trust you guys to know which one looks better. Here I demonstrate the blinding peach-salmon color I originally had to deal with in not only the entryway but the dining room (to the left in this pic). In the "before" pic, you get an idea based on the lighter wood floor discoloration of where we had a random chimney enclosed within an outer wall that made the entryway a little funky to navigate. So it was blasted right out of there! Now it makes for a much more open double entryway with walls which I have taken upon a quatrefoil print all by my lonesome... took about a month. You can sort of see it at the top of the doors in the above right pic, and two others below.

Aside from wall decor, here's another mirror I painted that adds a little pop of blue in contrast with a recent favorite purchase: coral picture frame by Cynthia Rowley.

The best for last. The den. This room by far took the longest. From layer upon layer of white to eventually get rid of the awful mustard yellow and very pessimistic green combination (smh), to the entire wall of shelves and cabinets not shown here, replacing and painting new doors+windows, and lastly the fireplace which I'll admit we "put our hands in the aiiir and said 'show us something'" (shoutout to Rihanna) to the painters who finished that job...we love this room the most. Obsessed with the green chair that was recovered and these green pillows as well (via Joss & Main). Also not shown are matching green window cushions on the shelf-cabinet wall. The significant other naturally finds our new flat screen TV to be the most beautiful piece of "art" here.

More to come, I am sure, but not just of my art projects. I'm getting back into the BLING of things and am excited to share some Winston gems I've stumbled across as of late. Stay tuned! xx